MLB DFS Live Before Lock (Wednesday, July 1): DraftKings & FanDuel Picks Recap

This is a recap of our Wednesday, July 1 MLB DFS Live Before Lock show. It was a short seven-game main slate that locked at 7:15 PM ET, so treat everything below as a record of how we read the board in the Stokastic MLB DFS Sims, not as live advice for a slate that has already started. No Wrigley on the main slate this time, a Coors Field game to think about, and one pitcher who defined the whole build. Here is how we walked through it.

In Summary

• The Read That Shaped The Slate: Tatsuya Imai (HOU) is projecting as mega-chalk at $7,300, roughly 2x the field, on some of the worst raw stuff on the board but an elite strikeout rate. We capped him in large-field and faded him entirely in single-entry to get leverage.
• Single-Entry Pitchers: Shane Drohan (MIL) and Taj Bradley (MIN) were our preferred arms, with Bradley doubling as the leverage play against the Imai chalk.
• Favorite Stack: the Tampa Bay Rays at Kansas City. It was our top team on DraftKings and FanDuel, and the Sims agreed.
• FanDuel: we leaned Zack Wheeler (PHI) over Paul Skenes (PIT) and dug into low-owned Phillies bats against Skenes.
• The Fade: the chalk Miami Marlins at Coors. Obvious game environment, but we went well under the field.

Watch: MLB DFS Live Before Lock (Wednesday, July 1)

Below is the full show. The Sims walkthrough, the stuff-plus screens, and every salary we reference below are easier to follow with the video running alongside this recap.

Watch on YouTube

The Read That Shaped The Slate: Mega-Chalk Tatsuya Imai

The single biggest outlier on this slate was not a hitter. It was a pitcher the field could not stop clicking on. Tatsuya Imai (HOU) came into Wednesday projecting around 2x the field's ownership at $7,300 against the Minnesota Twins, and the Sims kept spitting him out because his strikeout rate slashes everyone else on a thin board.

Here is the problem. Run the pitch-modeling screens and Imai grades out at an 83 stuff-plus over his roughly 47 big-league innings, with position players on this slate carrying a higher stuff-plus number than he does. That is one of the worst raw-stuff profiles of any starter pitching all day. He just eviscerated the Detroit Tigers in his last outing (10 strikeouts, 21 batters faced, two hits, one walk), and he trimmed to a three-pitch mix to cut his walks, but the underlying stuff says there will be nights he gets rocked. It is very hard to predict which nights those are.

So we split it by format:

• Large-Field GPPs: we will hold hands with the field here and cap him at roughly half our lineups. When your chalk pitcher is this cheap and the K upside is real, you do not want to be 0% and you do not need to be 80%.
• Single-Entry: zero. There is a 0% chance we play Imai in single-entry, because the way to attack a walk-prone, boom-or-bust chalk arm is to take the other side.

That other side is where the value lives. We backed the Twins on the moneyline for real on the betting side, and in DFS the leverage comes from Twins bats plus the opposing starter. If you want the deeper framework on why fading obvious chalk wins tournaments, our MLB DFS contrarian strategy guide goes further than we can here.

The Pitchers We Built Around

Beyond the Imai question, this was a shallow pitching menu, so the edge came from where we differed from the field, not from one obvious ace. These were the arms we spread across.

The value/punt question came down to Kyle Freeland (COL) at $5,000 versus a sub-$5K bullpen-game punt. We preferred Freeland: he is at least a confirmed starter, and if he gives you something serviceable it hedges the chance that the mega-chalk Marlins stack goes nuclear behind him. On DraftKings, we ended up around 50/50 between Drohan and Imai for exposure, tilting slightly more Drohan (capping Imai), with Bradley in the 30% range.

A quick word on the arms we passed on: Michael McGreevy (STL), Seth Lugo (KC), J.T. Ginn (ATH), and Zac Gallen (ARI) all held no interest for us as pitcher plays. Shane McClanahan (TB) at $8K on DraftKings drew a sliver of interest at 3% ownership against Kansas City, but the innings question (can he get to six?) kept us light.

The Stacks: Tampa Bay Leads The Way

This is where the slate got fun. Our clear favorite team, and the Sims' clear favorite team, was the same one. This is how we ranked the stack menu before diving into each.

Tampa Bay Rays at Kansas City (top stack). We were obsessed with this game environment. Kauffman Stadium finally hit its summer conditions on Wednesday (90-plus degrees, 50-plus percent humidity for the first time this season), which is the first real chance to see the moved-in fences play up for power. On the other side, Seth Lugo has a growing right-handed problem: a 244 expected ISO against righties this season, the highest of his career, and he has struggled to put lefties away lately too. Junior Caminero (TB) has been scorching, but the Rays beat you in a lot of ways even beyond him with Yandy Díaz (TB) and Jonathan Aranda (TB). We were happy to run a full five-man Rays stack, and we mixed in some 4-3 builds with them as the anchor. We also backed the Rays on the run line on the betting side.

Kansas City Royals (against McClanahan). The flip side of that game got no love from the field, which is exactly why we liked it. We just watched this Royals lineup with Bobby Witt Jr. (KC) and Salvador Perez (KC) rough up McClanahan recently, so we know it is in the range of outcomes, and the ballpark helps.

San Francisco Giants (against Zac Gallen). Gallen has been incapable of getting lefties out lately, with a roughly 10% strikeout rate to lefties and a 250 expected ISO against them. That points us straight at the Giants' left-handed bats, Rafael Devers (SF) and Bryce Eldridge (SF) chief among them. It is not a great park for lefty power, but the platoon edge is loud.

Athletics and Dodgers (the bullpen game). The Los Angeles Dodgers pushed Shohei Ohtani (LAD) back a day and opened with Jack Dryer before what looked like a Charlie Barnes bulk stint, so this profiles as an all-hands bullpen game. That makes the Athletics bats, with Nick Kurtz (ATH) and Shea Langeliers (ATH), interesting against a patchwork staff, while the Dodgers' order (Freddie Freeman (LAD), Mookie Betts (LAD), Andy Pages (LAD), Max Muncy (LAD)) draws Ginn on the other side.

The Miami Marlins fade. Miami at Coors against Freeland is the obvious chalk stack, and it will be the most-owned team on the slate. We went well under the field here (under 5-10%). Beyond the pinch-hit risk (Eury Ruiz (MIA) and others are likely to get lifted, and Xavier Edwards (MIA) was not in the lineup), we simply preferred paying up for the game environments the field was underrating in Tampa Bay and Kansas City. If you want one Marlins one-off, Eury Ruiz projects well but is likely limited to about three at-bats before the right-handers come in.

Build your own version of this slate. Every ownership read, projection, and optimal-exposure call above comes straight out of the Stokastic MLB DFS Sims & Contest Sims. Get 10% off MLB and All-Access this July 4th week with code GRILL10.

Example Single-Entry Build: Our Core Lineup

If we are playing one lineup in single-entry, this is the crux of it: Taj Bradley and Shane Drohan on the mound, a five-man Tampa Bay stack anchored by Junior Caminero (with two of the three of Caminero, Díaz, and Aranda as a hard rule), and Kansas City pieces filling out the rest. No Imai anywhere in the build, which is the whole point. The only alternate path we considered was working in a Twins bat or two against Imai, but that forces you off some of the positions we want, so the Rays-plus-Royals core stayed intact. For a full walkthrough of how we structure single-entry versus mass-multi, our guide to winning MLB DFS tournaments covers the exposure math, and if any of the terms below are new, our MLB DFS glossary breaks them down.

One build note we kept repeating: because the chalk pitching sits so cheap (everything under $9K, the top arms in the $7K range), there is almost no reason to reach for a sub-$5K punt starter here. You only need that move on slates where two studs like Skenes and Wheeler strand you at SP2. That is not this slate.

FanDuel-Specific Notes

The Imai chalk problem does not exist on FanDuel, because his ownership crashes there and you have a single 100% of pitcher ownership to spread rather than the doubled-up structure of DraftKings. That made us comfortable leaning into the pitchers and hunting for cheap, low-owned bats.

Our play was straightforward: play Zack Wheeler, play some Paul Skenes, and get to low-owned Phillies bats against Skenes. On a four-top FanDuel roster, the names that stood out were Kyle Schwarber (PHI) at $4,400, Bryce Harper (PHI) at $3,900, and Bryson Stott (PHI). Single-digit ownership on hitters that good, in a hot band box with the wind out, is exactly the leverage FanDuel gives you when everyone is stacking the pitcher side. Tampa Bay and Kansas City remained our favorite stacks here too.

The Bottom Line

This was a slate defined by one read: a mega-chalk pitcher with elite strikeouts but the worst stuff on the board, which turned "how much Imai?" into the central question of every build. We capped him in large-field, faded him entirely in single-entry, and pointed our leverage at Taj Bradley plus the Tampa Bay Rays stack that both our eyes and the Sims loved. On FanDuel, Wheeler over Skenes with cheap Phillies bats was the cleanest path.

Remember that MLB DFS is a long game. You will lose more days than you win playing tournaments, but running these tools over a full season is how you put yourself in position to win real money.

Want to build the next slate the same way? The Stokastic MLB DFS Sims & Contest Sims run projections, ownership, and optimal exposure on every DraftKings and FanDuel lineup. Get 10% off MLB and All-Access packages this July 4th week with code GRILL10

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